Jennifer Ashley - Tiger Magic

She yelled at Cherie to start trying to break down the other doors. Cherie obeyed, the tiles vibrating under Carly’s feet every time Cherie’s heavy body hit a door.

Carly kept spraying the studio. She was coughing though, not finding air. The cubs surrounded Carly, holding each other, holding her. She did a head count and nearly cried with relief when she counted eight—nine and ten were Cherie and Olaf in the hall.

Her effort with the fire extinguisher was working somewhat, tamping down the immediate flames. Carly led the cubs out of the studio again, squirting at fire as she went, taking the kids to where Cherie was still trying to open a door.

All the doors seemed to be sealed shut, or bolted. They were steel doors, and Cherie was denting them, but none had broken open.

But they had a chance. Carly kept spraying, Cherie kept beating at the doors, Olaf trying to help. The rest of the cubs huddled around Carly, Jordan holding on to one of her legs.

All would have been well, Carly thought, if not for the next explosion that ripped down the hall, shooting another inferno into the corridor.

He barreled through them all, the barricades, the firefighters, the police who tried to stop him. He broke anything in his way, including the front door that already sagged from its hinges, and leapt into a fiery nightmare.

It was black-dark and hot, smoke pouring through the corridor. He’d never been in this building before, never been near it until he’d followed Carly and Armand here today.

No matter. Tiger’s well-honed sense of smell told him the cubs were above him, trapped on the second floor. It also told him the jaguar and large gray wolf at the end of the hall were frustrated by the barricade that blocked their way up the stairs.

The debris included part of the walls, the pipes, the ceiling. Spike and Ellison were trying to climb over it, but with every leap or step, the pile shifted, sending them down again.

Tiger growled, shaking the air. Ellison and Spike swung around, wolf and jaguar staring in surprise before turning back to the task of climbing up the blockage.

Tiger bounded past them. He stretched his big body and leapt up the mounded debris, finding holds that had eluded the other two, until he made it to the top. From here, it was a short leap to the next floor, but Spike and Ellison were snarling beneath him.

Tiger slid a few inches back toward them, speaking in growls. Grab on, assholes. Hurry up.

Ellison’s wolf understood, and he reached up to clamp his mouth around the base of Tiger’s tail. Spike, behind him, wrapped his jaguar paws around Ellison.

Tiger leapt. He used claws and paws to scramble up through the hole to the next floor, the weight of the other two barely slowing him. When they reached level flooring, Spike and Ellison dropped off, and all three faced a corridor littered with burning beams.

Tiger ran. His body stretched and bunched as he plowed through the flaming mess, closing his eyes against the black smoke. He knew where Carly was without having to look. The mate bond was taut like a stretched rubber band, pulling him straight to her.

He found Carly on her back on the floor, inches from a burning beam, her body still. Tiger roared, shaking loose more debris, and cubs screamed.

The jaguar ran by. Jordan shouted, opening his arms. Spike caught Jordan’s shirt with his teeth, flipping the little boy up and onto his back.

Cherie in her grizzly form was hunkered next to Carly, and she raised her muzzle in a mournful howl. Olaf, in his human form, sat on Carly’s other side, holding Carly’s hand.

Tiger’s heart pounded as he slid to a halt, but he knew Carly wasn’t dead. The mate bond was still there, as was the bond to her cub.

But she was unconscious, Carly’s face ashen in the light of the fire. Cherie rocked next to her, moaning.

Tiger nuzzled Carly’s face, taking her scent, sending reassurances through the bond. Then he turned and grabbed at the handle of the nearest door, the heat of it singeing his paws.

Olaf, serious-faced, said, “We tried to open the doors. They’re blocked. Is Carly dying?”

Tiger saw where Cherie had dented two of the steel doors. He grabbed for the handle of one of the bent ones, but the door handle snapped off, and Tiger slipped to the floor.

He stood again, shaking himself out, letting rage take over. Cherie couldn’t budge the door, but Cherie hadn’t been created in a lab where breaking through doors had been part of her training. After a while, the researchers had had to make Tiger’s cage doors about two feet thick.

Tiger backed up, lunged, and hit the door with all four paws, full force. The door groaned under the onslaught, bent some more, then broke from the wall and skittered inside the room. Tiger rode the door through the flames, through burning tables and chairs, and slammed into a wall under a window. The shades were down, but Tiger ripped the shades from the wall and then yanked the window out of the wall as well.

Firemen below yelled, signaling the ladder truck to move its position. Tiger dropped the window and ran back through broken glass to the corridor.

He grabbed Ellison by the scruff of the neck and dragged him to Carly. Ellison, catching on, shifted to human, his skin breaking into sweat from the fire’s heat. Ellison lifted Carly over his shoulders and ran with her to the window.

No time to wait to see whether the ladder trucks came for her—Tiger had to get the others out.

Spike ran by with Jordan on him as well as one other cub, and into the room with the open window. The cubs scrambled from his back to the windowsill.

Tiger growled at Cherie. She shook herself, recognizing the commander in Tiger. Three more of the cubs fit on her back, and she ran through the burning door to the next room.

Four cubs remained, including Olaf. Tiger lowered himself and they climbed onto him, clinging to his fur. A sweat-streaked fireman appeared at the window, reaching for Carly, and then another fireman came behind him. Spike and Ellison stayed with the cubs, helping and calming them, while the firemen lifted them out.

They’d make it.

As soon as the thought formed in Tiger’s head, another explosion sounded, blasting Tiger and his load of cubs back into the hall. The steel doorframe of the doorway to safety folded in on itself as the wall broke apart and fell.

The explosion had come from above, and now the corridor’s ceiling collapsed, burying Tiger and all four cubs under burning wreckage.

Carly swam to wakefulness, and thought she was being smothered. She grabbed for the thing that pressed her face and found a plastic mound, then saw the dark face of an EMT behind it.

“Take it easy,” the man said. “You’re fine. You just need oxygen. You’re pregnant, aren’t you?” Carly nodded, the mask moving with her. “We’ll get you to a hospital and have both you and the baby checked out. All right?”

Carly lifted the mask from her mouth. “Where are the others?”

The EMT pressed the mask back into place. “They’re coming out. Your boss said there were ten kids. That right?”

Carly nodded again, tears leaking from her eyes.

“Some crazy tiger ran in there after them.” The EMT shook his head. “I guess he was one of those Shifters. We couldn’t stop him.”

Tiger? Carly couldn’t shout questions with the oxygen mask over her face. More tears came. Tiger had returned. And he was saving the cubs.

She made herself relax, to breathe the healing oxygen and not move. Tiger would come out, he’d have the cubs, and all would be well.

There was a whump, and firemen shouting, and a huge plume of flame and smoke shot from the building’s roof, high into the blue of the afternoon sky. Every window showed fire, and a part of the building collapsed.